The two criminally obvious things to say about Sacha Baron Cohen in “Bruno”:



1. If your taste in mainstream movie comedy goes about as far out on the edge as possible, you’re not going to want to miss it. It’s hilarious. I spent most of its 82 minutes laughing at various volume levels. Granted, I was sometimes hiding my eyes while laughing and interspersing guffaws with groans, but I don’t expect to see anything funnier this year.



And it’s probably the funniest movie, by far, I’ve seen since . . . well . . . “Borat,” that comedy grenade wherein Cohen, as the world’s most clueless Kazakhstan journalist, invaded the inner sanctum of American stupidity.



2. If you have ever been offended by anything in a movie at all—or ever worried that you might possibly be — you’ll want to give it the widest possible berth. In the same way that those with bleeding ulcers shouldn’t be popping green peppers like popcorn and washing them down with shots of tequila, people appalled by bad taste, should simply not indulge in “Bruno” — or even consider it.



Why? It’s got raunchy language, nudity — frontal and otherwise — and sex that is decidedly not simulated (at one point, “Bruno,” in an effort to “cure” his gayness tries to, uhhh, blend in with a rural swingers club, where real “swinging” is in progress).



To those who might be worried that its absurd gay caricature is homophobic, I think that fear misses the movie’s point almost completely. Courtesy of TV sitcoms, Ellen DeGeneres and same-sex marriage laws springing up all over America, mainstream American homophobia is almost certainly on its last legs. “Bruno” just knocks what’s left on its duff and invites your congratulatory horselaugh.



The laws for this kind of burlesque buffoonery are ancient. Bruno, then, is no more supposed to be an example of a real gay man — or, for that matter, an Austrian — than Pigmeat Markham hitting defendants with a pig bladder was supposed to remind you of a real judge. Or Ralph Kramden was intended to be representative of bus drivers. Or Charlie, on “Two and a Half Men” is an authentic sample of what TV commercial jingle writers are like.



Bruno, not to put too fine a point on it, is an idiot. Cohen and director Larry Charles make that clear right up front when the host of Austria’s fashion TV show “Funky Zeit” loses his job in a Velcro suit incident and tells us “for the second time in a century, the world turned on Austria’s greatest man because he was brave enough to try something new.” (The first, of course, was that well-known misunderstood innovator Adolf Hitler.)



So Bruno’s going to show the fashion world—which he’s just discovered to be “superficial” — and become “the biggest gay Austrian movie star since Schwarzenegger.”



What follows is Bruno’s hilariously hopeless and hapless American search for fame including the TV interview show pilot that humiliates Paula Abdul and gets a two word salute in passing from Harrison Ford (“F--- off” Ford says with some eloquence); and an interview with very real Republican politician Ron Paul that goes very wrong in a hotel bedroom. (Bruno thought he was Ru-Paul.)



Very real pastors in the “gay conversion” business advise how to change his sexual orientation. (No Sinead O’Connor, Indigo Girls or Village People records, one prescribes.)



Obviously, D-list Hollywood is a feloniously easy target. Still, when he pretends to be looking for babies to film, he asks a stage mother “is your baby comfortable with bees, wasps and hornets?” You really don’t want to know if her agreeable alacrity was real or staged.



The comic audience disgust that greets his efforts to adopt a black African baby is nothing compared to what happens during his makeout session with his lover in the middle of a caged ultimate fighting match.



It goes without saying that no comedian can stay radical forever. It all turns to shtick sooner or later. What was so provocative and unusual in “Borat” has, indeed, become shtick.



But that’s the thing about a truly great comedian, and I think Sacha Baron Cohen is all of that.



If it’s good enough, shtick never stops being funny.



Movie Review



“Bruno”



??? 1/2



Sacha Baron Cohen in his newest comedy outrage as the world’s most ridiculous and far-fetched gay Austrian fashionista and his search for fame in D-list America. Directed by Larry Charles. 83 minutes. Rated R for pervasive strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity and language. Opened Friday in area theaters.